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Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Methodology and quality
  3. ESMS metadata
  4. Health and living conditions of elderly people

Health and living conditions of elderly people

1. Contact
1.1. Contact organisation

Statistics Estonia

1.2. Contact organisation unit

Population and Social Statistics Department

1.3. Contact name

Tatjana Portnova

1.4. Contact person function

Leading Analyst

1.5. Contact mail address

20 Narva Rd., 51009 Tartu, Estonia

1.6. Contact email address

tatjana.portnova [at] stat.ee

1.7. Contact phone number

37254530568

2. Metadata update
2.1. Metadata last certified

27/03/2025

2.2. Metadata last update

27/03/2025

3. Statistical presentation
3.1. Data description

Health, living conditions and social network of elderly people (aged 50+). Pension’s indicators have been agreed upon in the European Union to better evaluate the adequacy and sustainability of pensions. Pension schemes are aimed at providing all pensioners with decent standard of living to prevent poverty and social exclusion at an old age, retaining thereby also solidarity within and between generations.

3.2. Classification system

Not used

3.3. Sector coverage

Households

3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions

Aggregate replacement ratio – the ratio of income from pensions of persons aged between 65 and 74 years and income from work of persons aged between 50 and 59 years.

At-risk-of-poverty rate – the share of persons with an equalised annual disposable income lower than the at-risk-of-poverty threshold.

At-risk-of-poverty threshold – 60% of the median equalised annual disposable income of household members.

Disposable (net) income – a sum of income from wage labour, benefits and losses from self-employment, property income, social transfers, regular inter-household cash transfers received and receipts for tax adjustment of which inter-household cash transfers paid, taxes on wealth and repayments for tax adjustment have been subtracted.

Equalised income – the total household income, which is divided by a sum of equivalence scales of all household members.

Equivalence scale – a weight designated to a household member depending on his/her age to reflect the joint consumption of a household.

Highest quintile – a fifth of the population receiving the highest equalised disposable income.

Household – a group of persons living in the common main dwelling (at the same address), who share joint financial and/or food resources and whose members consider themselves to belong to the same household. Household can also consist of one member only.

Lowest quintile – a fifth of the population receiving the lowest equalised disposable income.

Most frequent activity status – activity status, which characterised a person for more than 6 months in a year.

Quintile share ratio – the sum of equalised annual disposable income of the highest quintile divided by the sum of equalised annual disposable income of the lowest quintile.

Relative median at-risk-of-poverty gap – the distance of mean income of people at-risk-of-poverty-rate from the at-risk-of-poverty threshold in percentages.

Single person aged over 64 – household consisting of one person aged 65 or more.

Single person aged under 65 – household consisting of one person aged 64 or less.

3.5. Statistical unit

Person

3.6. Statistical population

Permanent residents of Estonia

FRAME

Households and their members living at the address registered in the Population Register

3.7. Reference area

Estonia as a whole

3.8. Time coverage

2000–…

3.9. Base period

Not applicable

4. Unit of measure

5. Reference period

Year

6. Institutional mandate
6.1. Legal acts and other agreements

DIRECTLY APPLICABLE LEGAL ACTS

Not available

OTHER LEGAL ACTS

Not available

OTHER AGREEMENTS

Not avaliable

7. Confidentiality
7.1. Confidentiality - policy

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in § 32, § 34, § 35, § 38 of the Official Statistics Act.

7.2. Confidentiality - data treatment

The dissemination of data collected for the production of official statistics is based on the requirements laid down in §§ 34 and 35 of the Official Statistics Act.

The principles for treatment of confidential data can be found here.

8. Release policy
8.1. Release calendar

Notifications about the dissemination of statistics are published in the release calendar, which is available on the website. Every year on 1 October, the release times of the statistical database, news releases, main indicators by IMF SDDS and publications for the following year are announced in the release calendar (in the case of publications – the release month).

8.2. Release calendar access

Calendar

8.3. User access

All users have been granted equal access to official statistics: dissemination dates of official statistics are announced in advance and no user category (incl. Eurostat, state authorities and mass media) is provided access to official statistics before other users. Official statistics are first published in the statistical database. If there is also a news release, it is published simultaneously with data in the statistical database. Official statistics are available on the website at 8:00 a.m. on the date announced in the release calendar.

9. Frequency of dissemination

Annual

10. Accessibility and clarity
10.1. News release

Not published

10.2. Publications

Not published

10.3. Online database

Data are published in the statistical database at https://andmed.stat.ee/en/stat under the subject area “Social life / Social exclusion and poverty / Poverty, coping and social relationships of elderly people” in all tables.

The source data of tables LES61–LES69 are from the Estonian Social Survey, and the source data of tables LES70–LES93 are from the SHARE (Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe).

10.4. Microdata access

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in § 33, § 34, § 35, § 36, § 38 of the Official Statistics Act. Access to microdata and anonymisation of microdata are regulated by Statistics Estonia’s procedure for dissemination of confidential data for scientific purposes.

10.5. Other

Not used

10.6. Documentation on methodology

SHARE Eesti. Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (in Estonian)

SHARE. Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. 50+ in Europe

The Estonian Social Survey. Methodological Report (2010)

10.7. Quality documentation

The quality report sent to Eurostat is available at https://circabc.europa.eu/faces/jsp/extension/wai/navigation/container.jsp

11. Quality management
11.1. Quality assurance

To assure the quality of processes and products, Statistics Estonia applies the EFQM Excellence Model, the European Statistics Code of Practice and the Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System (ESS QAF). Statistics Estonia is also guided by the requirements in § 7. “Principles and quality criteria of producing official statistics” of the Official Statistics Act.

11.2. Quality assessment

Statistics Estonia performs all statistical activities according to an international model (Generic Statistical Business Process Model – GSBPM). According to the GSBPM, the final phase of statistical activities is overall evaluation using information gathered in each phase or sub-process; this information can take many forms, including feedback from users, process metadata, system metrics and suggestions from employees. This information is used to prepare the evaluation report which outlines all the quality problems related to the specific statistical activity and serves as input for improvement actions.

12. Relevance
12.1. User needs

Ministry of Social Affairs

Institute of International Social Studies

Tallinn University

University of Tartu

12.2. User satisfaction

Since 1996, Statistics Estonia has conducted reputation and user satisfaction surveys. All results are available on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section User surveys.

12.3. Completeness

The data are complete and in compliance with the data composition requirements of the European Commission regulation.

13. Accuracy and reliability
13.1. Overall accuracy

The accuracy of source data is monitored by assessing the methodological soundness of data sources and the adherence to the methodological recommendations.

13.2. Sampling error

Sampling error estimates are calculated for all indicators found, but are published only for more important indicators.

13.3. Non-sampling error

Although a person has the obligation to ensure correctness of residential address in the population register, there is some under-coverage of persons and households there. Assuming that all persons living permanently in Estonia are registered in the population register and considering the amount of imprecise addresses in the population register, the under-coverage of households may be at most 1–1.5%.

14. Timeliness and punctuality
14.1. Timeliness

Preliminary data are published 160 days after the field-work.

Final data and microdata files are published 240 days after the end of the reference year (T + 240).

14.2. Punctuality

The data have been published at the time announced in the release calendar.

15. Coherence and comparability
15.1. Comparability - geographical

The health and living conditions survey of elderly people is part of a major survey, SHARE (The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe), which is conducted in every two years. 4 waves of SHARE (2004–2011) were conducted in 16 European countries. Estonia joined the survey in the fourth wave. From 2017, all European Union Member States and Israel participate in the survey.

In the Eurostat public use database the PENSIONS indicators have been published under one year greater than here, as Eurostat uses the survey year and Statistics Estonia the income year.

15.2. Comparability - over time

The data are comparable since 2005.

In the case of indicators relating to poverty and inequality it is important to keep in mind that the figures for 2000–2003 are calculated on the bases of the Household Budget Survey (HBS), whereas the indicators for 2004 and onwards are drawn from the Estonian Social Survey (ESS). From 2012 onwards the disposable income related to elderly people poverty and inequality indicators is in addition to the Estonian Social Survey partially from registry data (Tax and Customs Board, Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund, Estonian Health Insurance Fund, Social Insurance Board). The ESS is conducted in all European Union (EU) countries following the same methodological principles with the aim of collecting comparable data on income and living conditions across the EU. Enhanced international comparability of income statistics that comes with this is, unfortunately, coupled with temporary within country reduction in data comparability across different years. The two data sources – the HBS and the ESS have several substantial methodological differences, which can lead to changes in indicators between 2003 and 2004. Change in data sources in 2012 should be taken into account when comparing data for 2004–2011 with the following years, when income data comes partially from registers. The user of statistical data has therefore keep in mind that the discontinuities that may occur are methodological in nature and do not necessarily reflect underlying social changes.

15.3. Coherence - cross domain

The outputs of the statistical activity are coherent.

15.4. Coherence - internal

The internal consistency of the data is ensured by the use of a common methodology for data collection and data aggregation.

16. Cost and burden

17. Data revision
17.1. Data revision - policy

The data revision policy and notification of corrections are described in the section Principles of dissemination of official statistics of the website of Statistics Estonia.

17.2. Data revision - practice

Not applicable

18. Statistical processing
18.1. Source data

SURVEY DATA

Not used

ADMINISTRATIVE DATA

SHARE (The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) data base.

Since 2012, statistics are calculated partially on the basis of the data of registers (Tax and Customs Board, Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund, Estonian Health Insurance Fund, Social Insurance Board).

DATA FROM OTHER STATISTICAL ACTIVITIES

Data from statistical activity 40003 “Household Panel Survey” are used.

18.2. Frequency of data collection

Annual

18.3. Data collection

Statistics are calculated in addition to the SHARE, on the basis of the Household Panel Survey data, since 2012 partially on the basis data of registers (Tax and Customs Board, Unemployment Insurance Fund, Estonian Health Insurance Fund, Social Insurance Board). The Social Survey is a sample survey designed to obtain comparative and reliable statistics on income distribution, living conditions and social exclusion.

All households living permanently in Estonia are considered as the surveye population. Persons living in institutional households (children’s homes, care homes, convents) are excluded. All published estimates have been calculated for the total population of a respective region. The size of respective populations has been determined on the basis of the estimated total population provided by Statistics Estonia.

Data from Tax and Customs Board are received via an FTP-server and X-Road; data from Unemployment Insurance Fund, Estonian Health Insurance Fund and Social Insurance Board are received via an FTP-server.

18.4. Data validation

Before data dissemination, the internal coherence of the data is checked.

18.5. Data compilation

Individual data are aggregated to the level necessary for analysis. This includes aggregating the data according to the classification, and calculating various statistical measuring indicators, such as the average, median, dispersion, etc.

The collected data are converted into statistical output. This includes calculating additional indicators.

18.6. Adjustment

Not applicable

19. Comments

As of 2017, the statistical activity is included in main statistics, i.e. it will be conducted each year, except for statistics published on the basis of the SHARE (The Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe) survey.

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stat [at] stat.ee

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